I spend maybe 5 mins a day tops on social media(1)...
I'm not particularly invested in Bluesky, but I found it to be the polar opposite of Twitter. It's like everyone who quit the twitter band wagon just went to the twitter clone, as a middle finger move. It's a ying and yang.
I'm still on Twitter, because some people just haven't moved on and I still find their content valid. I vomit a little if I happen to click the sidebar and I want to close my account nearly every visit. I honestly hang by a thread just because some accounts there don't offer an alternative (and Musk removed reading content unauthenticated).
I'm not particularly invested in Mastodon, but I must say that it is where I found the best value per minute. It feels like the natural follow up to Google+. I find it the most 'balanced' between Bluesky and Twitter.
[1] HN excluded, I spend many 5' sessions a day here...
I find Bluesky better but I've had to be pretty aggressive about blocking centre-left types. I don't even disagree with most of what they're complaining about, after being away from twitter for years that whole style of discourse is just extremely unpalatable.
Def get the impression they're driving people away who were enjoying bluesky previously, there's just so much of them on the feeds atm.
If by "nontoxic", one means a social media where people complain about the other side, then sure, I guess bluesky is on a great quest.
I don't have a dog in US politics fight, but from my experience on BlueSky, it has become a social network for people who disagree with the current US politics, and most of the content there is debunking/criticizing the other side. Whether you think it's nontoxic is up to you, but history has shown that creating isolated echo-chambers is generally a bad idea.
I just turn off the politics on BlueSky by not following rabid politics-posters. Even the retro-computing enthusiast I follow can have a bad day and repost something political and I'm okay with a little bit of that.
(I had to unfollow Mark Hamill though because of the politics firehose. And I generally agree with him politically ... I just don't need it on BlueSky all the time.)
I think it is the opposite. When you are in your echo chamber you don't realize that your view is toxic because what you get is positive feedback and think that it is in fact "normal".
Bluesky has plenty of toxic communities (e.g. the trans one), but hey are on the "good side" of the political spectrum so they get a pass.
As far as I know you can deliberately choose who you follow (like on Twitter) and which algorithm you use to compose your feed (unlike Twitter). It gives me more power to decide what is important to me and what isn't. How is that not an improvement?
An echo chamber, also known as "a community" or "having friends," is basically how most human interaction worked before the Web popularized constant, context-collapsed arguing with various types of reactionaries, conspiracy theorists, bio-essentialists, "race realists," "climate skeptics," etc., about which "evidence" sounds or feels the most correct (rather than what evidence is actually provably correct).
Since moderation of some sort is pretty essential on the open web today, you can either subscribe to the "group think" of the platform you're currently using (like X/Twitter today), or you could do it the Bluesky way, let people chose what blocklists to follow.
As someone who generally don't do blocklists/mutes/blocking much at all, I know what approach I prefer. I like that people have a choice at least, compared to the alternative approaches.
Actually, shared blocklists originated in the desire to avoid harassment. You can make a case for that being group think if you like, but I doubt you'll convince me.
Only for the most part; people online aren't my friends, there is not enough interaction/depth of interaction to get to really know them and being online tends to turn people into fuckwads(1). They just happen to be you're kind of fuckwads.
It’s well accepted that people tend to be more unpleasant online, and text doesn’t translate nuance well enough to avoid misunderstandings, no matter how many emojis are assigned to the task.
I filter both, plus any other political talk. I want to look at retro games, some tech and art and that's it. For some people everything has to be political, and anyone who doesn't want to read the angry rants is an an echo chamber, but so be it. Personally, I find my cake to be very tasty.
It's possible to block both. If bsky would let you use starter packs as block lists, it would be a lot easier than it is.
I block any account that is primarily politics-based (Hillary Clinton's social media team joined a month ago and has 5k blocks already so I'm not alone), and other accounts as and when they become tiresome (ie when they go on a political rant). My feeling is that academics broke mostly to bluesky while techies broke mostly to mastodon. I follow some academic accounts that occasionally post interesting things - nothing earth-shattering, but worth checking in once every couple of days.
My main problem with bsky is that a lot of academics seem to approach it as a write-only medium. No engagement.
I mean yea you can call anything hate if you squint hard enough. Reasonable terms of service are never going to satisfy everyone. You can definitely have your cake and eat it too so long as you don't try and please everyone.
the problem is both sides are so caught up in their own identity politics that they can't see the other's perspective. the same goes for right-wing and left-wing in America.
The bigger problem is that people from societies with FPTP voting systems often tend to think binary. The world is more multi-faceted than that, it's not always two sides to a coin, good vs bad, left vs. right, etc.
Almost no one is pro genocide, so why is it happening when most countries are more or less democracies? One theory is that the media and politician change the narrative whichever way it suits them. And imo one way to combat this is with polite measured conversations. As the alternative is easily distorted by the opposite side.
There are certain keywords people use that are instant red flags. They usually mean I can immediately ignore everything they've written. "Common sense" has become a big one. It's code for "my feelings trump your facts" (pun intended).
But another one is "both sides". There are a number of reasons people fall back to this. Usually it's intellectual laziness, not wanting to know any of the details, usually because it's an issue that the person saying it doesn't actually care about the issue. Some people derive validation from somehow being "above the fray" on some partisan issue.
Another reason is simply not caring about the issue and trying to create a moral equivalence is intentionally or unintentionally used to silence a particular topic.
Not everything is some disagreement between equivalent positions. Sometimes, a given position is just plain wrong. Slavery, genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing. These are issues historically that have a right side and a wrong side.
On Gaza, there is the side that wants to live, not be bombed and not exist in an apartheid state and there's the side that wants to ethnically cleanse millions of people to create lebensraum. Merely going to Israel has been a radicalizing experience for a lot of people because they instantly recognize what's going on. There are countless examples of this now. I'll choose just one as an example: Sde Temain [1].
I suspect the only true way to keep social media non-toxic is simply keep the audience small. Plenty of lovely small subreddits out there. Since bluesky isn't at Twitter volumes yet, it's hard to know if any of their changes will matter in the slightest.
Regardless of your allegiances, if you are all of the same homogenious opinion, how would you even recognize extremism or "toxicity" in your own echo chambers?
Humans are incredibly easy to 'control' with tech. From pamphlets to books to radio and onwards through history to colour revolutions and influencing elections to getting you to buy things late at night that you won't ever use etc, its happening all the time.
Every interaction you have with a social network nudges you into one mode of interacting or other.
The biggest deviation from the norm with Twitter is the ideas of quote-tweeting and subtweeting, making a new post rather than replying to something you disagree with in the comments. The automatic signal boost this achieves incentivizes it strongly, and when the larger account is the quote-tweeting account, they are inclined to hear reply comments almost exclusively from people who support their critique. The structural decision to make this form of interaction easy and productive leads to very Twitter-specific sort of toxic groupthink.
"You, a Twitter nobody, just disagreed with someone on their misinterpretation of a well-documented point of history. In response, they made a new post to their 700k followers calling you a chickenshit know-nothing. Your followers heard nothing. 300 of their followers have piled on to elaborate on your faults."
This used to be limited to the sort of instant cancellation associated with "Central Park Karen," who IIRC went viral just after boarding a flight and was fired before she landed.
I just want to go back to the early days of Facebook, when it was simply a small list of friends I actually knew and enjoyed hanging out with online. No karma, no upvotes or downvotes, no organizations, just people connecting.
Is there even a social platform like that anymore? One that isn’t political, overwhelming, or trying to be everything at once? At this point, it feels like the only real options are private Discord servers or maybe WhatsApp.
I guess the elephant in the room is that any successful platform needs advertising, and once businesses get involved, things tend to spiral with ads everywhere, and eventually, politics creep in too.
Hard for me to tell if I'm in the minority or part of some silent majority, but I don't see much toxic or political content on either site, mostly just art and content related to hobbies I have. I only look at my following feeds, and it's pretty easy to mute a few problem words or phrases. I figure if you spend a lot of time on social media, it's worth it to put in the work to tailor the content you see to your tastes.
It's pretty clear now that a suggestion algorithm that prioritizes engagement at all costs has toxic side effects. This does not prove that all promotion algorithms, much less all social media, is inherently toxic.
Mastodon is a social media platform that's not built on a content promotion algorithm. Mastodon has a lot of group think, and you can absolutely build yourself an echo chamber full of political virtue signalling if that's what you're into. But I wouldn't characterize this as "toxic," it just reflects what you put into it. There's no algorithm to pump it into your face if you don't want it.
I'd love to see a version of Mastodon, or some social media platform, that manages to promote sensible discussion algorithmically. I don't know how this would work, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that this proves that it's impossible.
If you ban politics, someone will just say you're playing politics.
I personally think the idea of creating a place that suits everyone is unrealistic. It will never happen, and there will always be something that offends one side or the other. It seems like open social networks will always be toxic (whatever that really means).
There's a difference between being toxic and not allowing politics. Political discussions aren't inherently toxic, they're just easier to slip into toxicity.
Look at HN. There's political conversation here occasionally, but it's not generally toxic.
All it takes is clear, consistent, and constant moderation.
I used to think like that, but now I believe the vast majority of those discussions are inherently toxic, so I just don’t bring them up anymore in almost any context, whether it's work, friends, family, or social networks (if I still used them, that is). It just brings so much unhappiness, and there's nothing to "gain", especially nowadays when you're constantly bombarded by social media, the media, or whatever else is pushing you in whatever direction is convenient at the time.
Let’s be honest, most political posts here get flagged and disappear almost immediately, especially if they lean a certain way. I’m not specifying which direction I think they lean because people will interpret it differently, and it would be pointless. It's yet another example of why, in most cases, it’s toxic.
They will be inherently toxic when the politics are inherently toxic.
You can be banned from /r/Conservative permanently for showing the slightest deviation from the current propaganda line, but there are such a ready supply of new people that the algorithm attracts who naturally are opposed to the political platform that many bans are handed out per discussion.
It amazes me that in the age of AI there isn't a way to utilise it to either talk users out of posting aggressive, illegal or inflammatory material or tag it as such, so you can filter out the blowhards on the platform.
Banning politics can be truly toxic, because it turns out people don't agree on what's political and what isn't. Me, I don't think the rights of women to get healthcare is political but I'm fully aware plenty of people disagree with me on this point.
Are any European-based social networks going to pop into existence at this opportune time to get some momentum from the current global western America-is-no-longer-our-friend sentiment?
They are federated as well; I just educated myself on BlueSky, I had heard that maybe it wasn't but it looks fairly federated. Companies can always slap a lock on after the fact though.
I think the entire concept of these global social networks is falling out of favour. I expect to see the rise of smaller online communities with well-defined interest scopes and robust community moderation - much like HN.
A few days ago I said how places like Bluesky only seem to contain posts about how terrible Twitter is, and no actual content of their own. Behold the first post I see:
> The administration is a perfect storm of dumb people who enjoy inflicting pain and are addicted to psychotic cruelty and quadrupling down. It ends in total ruin if you don't impeach him.
Second post:
> you, a rube: “i want my kid to grow up to be a doctor or an engineer or a teacher”
lutnick, a genius: “to make america great again your child will make iphones that they will not be able to afford”
Third (talking about some Trump post or something):
> Again, worth at the last considering the possibility that he’s a malevolent idiot who has no idea what he’s doing.
And so it goes on and on.
I'm all for a "non-toxic" social platform, but I have yet to see one. All the alternatives are mirror images of Twitter and co. — not in that they're not toxic, but that they're toxic but leaning in another direction politically. It's all the same, people calling other people stupid.
Bluesky looks very left wing centered, will make you even more biased to one side and blind for the other. The more you see just one side more extreme (or crazy) you will become.
I feel bad to say this, but it looks like it failed already to be non toxic. It at least is a lot less toxic than X. For now.
It is X vs BlueSky. It participates in the argument between two groups of people. It does not solve anything.
X is a lot worse, but with a growing number of users, a growing number of negativity will come. It starts on the political parts of the platform, but will trickle down to other parts as well.
By Bluesky being put away as a platform for 'lefties' on X and users on Bluesky saying "Go to your fascist platform X" to other users it essentially participates in dividing people. At least, on the political parts of the platform.
It confirms what an amazing job HN did in the last decade or more. Still a nice community, nice people and quality comments. Although some people will say it is in decline, it is still quite a nice and friendly community.
I still enjoy fintwit and like bluesky for energy related things.
> By Bluesky being put away as a platform for 'lefties' on X and users on Bluesky saying "Go to your fascist platform X" to other users it essentially participates in dividing people. At least, on the political parts of the platform.
What's wrong with that? I mean, yes, lefties can be pretty scathing against their own - particularly the questions of Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia come to my mind as major dividers.
But even then: the death threats, "I wish you'd get raped by the n----s you invited to Germany, then you see the results of the great replacement yourself" and similarly inclined comments on Twitter are all but completely absent on Bluesky, and instead of feeding even the most obvious trolls, the general policy is to block them and move on - which is why the far-right is complaining so often about Bluesky being a "librul echo chamber". They just can't fathom that people might not be interested in interacting with them.
What is wrong is that it does not help with the discussion. It makes the discussion personal by calling someone a fascist or a leftie. A good discussion is about the subject, not the person. Also it makes both X and Bluesky feel opinionated, making a good discussion impossible.
I must say that I did not see any death threats on X either, but i just choose to stay away from that part of the platform.
> A good discussion is about the subject, not the person.
That's the problem with trolls. They keep on pestering people with trivially-to-google questions, a tactic known as "sealioning" [1]. On top of that you have literal ChatGPT or otherwise AI-powered bots engaging in discussions in bad faith.
> It makes the discussion personal by calling someone a fascist or a leftie.
It's pretty pointless to debate with fascists, most of those that you can find on Twitter aren't interested in discussion - they're interested in destroying discussion by forcing others to interact with their bullshit.
Every time I open bluesky it seems to be full of over-the-top anxiety posting by delusional leftists - last post I saw was telling LGBT people to start storing cash in their mattresses before Trump confiscates their bank accounts. Either that or it's the embattled rear guard of wokism trying to impose increasingly arcane rules on other posters.
That's all less toxic than whatever is happening on twitter these days, but still harmful for the people involved and probably a net negative for society as a whole.
Bluesky is as bad as Twitter. The conspiracy theories and absurdly-biased takes are equally pronounced. Someone should start a social media site where you get booted for political talk, like you would from a decent gentleman's club.
> The question is: how much can you take in? As much as I despise the owner, it's X all day.
The problem with X is, the mirror is artificially dented by a ton of people paying for the privilege of getting their replies prioritised. That in turn drowns out the voice of those not willing to pay Musk for the privilege.
I spend maybe 5 mins a day tops on social media(1)...
I'm not particularly invested in Bluesky, but I found it to be the polar opposite of Twitter. It's like everyone who quit the twitter band wagon just went to the twitter clone, as a middle finger move. It's a ying and yang.
I'm still on Twitter, because some people just haven't moved on and I still find their content valid. I vomit a little if I happen to click the sidebar and I want to close my account nearly every visit. I honestly hang by a thread just because some accounts there don't offer an alternative (and Musk removed reading content unauthenticated).
I'm not particularly invested in Mastodon, but I must say that it is where I found the best value per minute. It feels like the natural follow up to Google+. I find it the most 'balanced' between Bluesky and Twitter.
[1] HN excluded, I spend many 5' sessions a day here...
You'd be surprised how little impact getting rid of all social media, including Twitter, really has on your life.
Just delete it.
You should direct some of these comments to the accounts you're following on Twitter.
I assume there's some convenient way to cross-post?
I find Bluesky better but I've had to be pretty aggressive about blocking centre-left types. I don't even disagree with most of what they're complaining about, after being away from twitter for years that whole style of discourse is just extremely unpalatable.
Def get the impression they're driving people away who were enjoying bluesky previously, there's just so much of them on the feeds atm.
> and Musk removed reading content unauthenticated
You might be interested in Nitter: https://status.d420.de/instances (you do need a Twitter account to self-host, though)
You can change every link to Twitter from x.com/... To xcancel.com/...
Works well usually
If by "nontoxic", one means a social media where people complain about the other side, then sure, I guess bluesky is on a great quest.
I don't have a dog in US politics fight, but from my experience on BlueSky, it has become a social network for people who disagree with the current US politics, and most of the content there is debunking/criticizing the other side. Whether you think it's nontoxic is up to you, but history has shown that creating isolated echo-chambers is generally a bad idea.
I just turn off the politics on BlueSky by not following rabid politics-posters. Even the retro-computing enthusiast I follow can have a bad day and repost something political and I'm okay with a little bit of that.
(I had to unfollow Mark Hamill though because of the politics firehose. And I generally agree with him politically ... I just don't need it on BlueSky all the time.)
I think 2 things can be true. Bluesky gives users more control to shape their feeds how they want. And many want Twitter with different politics.
It’s easier to be nontoxic when you don’t have to confront the evidence contrary to your echo chamber
I think it is the opposite. When you are in your echo chamber you don't realize that your view is toxic because what you get is positive feedback and think that it is in fact "normal".
Bluesky has plenty of toxic communities (e.g. the trans one), but hey are on the "good side" of the political spectrum so they get a pass.
Everyone can join BlueSky, so why wouldn't they need to confront opposing "evidence"?
very easy to block and filter to your tastes.
As far as I know you can deliberately choose who you follow (like on Twitter) and which algorithm you use to compose your feed (unlike Twitter). It gives me more power to decide what is important to me and what isn't. How is that not an improvement?
Try joining and posting any political statements that aren't strictly far-left, and you'll find out why pretty fast.
What did you post? Did you get banned or what?
Join until banned for some wrong thing post
An echo chamber, also known as "a community" or "having friends," is basically how most human interaction worked before the Web popularized constant, context-collapsed arguing with various types of reactionaries, conspiracy theorists, bio-essentialists, "race realists," "climate skeptics," etc., about which "evidence" sounds or feels the most correct (rather than what evidence is actually provably correct).
Their concept of shared blocklists is quite fascinating; designed to reinforce group think.
Since moderation of some sort is pretty essential on the open web today, you can either subscribe to the "group think" of the platform you're currently using (like X/Twitter today), or you could do it the Bluesky way, let people chose what blocklists to follow.
As someone who generally don't do blocklists/mutes/blocking much at all, I know what approach I prefer. I like that people have a choice at least, compared to the alternative approaches.
Actually, shared blocklists originated in the desire to avoid harassment. You can make a case for that being group think if you like, but I doubt you'll convince me.
I think your statement is the very definition of group think.
One person makes a blocklist and everyone else blindly adopts it.
Many people make block lists. And asserting people adopt them blindly is begging the question.
Livejournal had (has?) this concept for 15-20 years.
Just saying.
[dead]
Would you call it the same when a bunch of your friends recommend you stay away from someone? Or the opposite, introduce you to someone they like?
Only for the most part; people online aren't my friends, there is not enough interaction/depth of interaction to get to really know them and being online tends to turn people into fuckwads(1). They just happen to be you're kind of fuckwads.
(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect
That’s a stretch.
It’s well accepted that people tend to be more unpleasant online, and text doesn’t translate nuance well enough to avoid misunderstandings, no matter how many emojis are assigned to the task.
For a lot of people pro Palestine views are toxic for a lot of other pro Israel is. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I filter both, plus any other political talk. I want to look at retro games, some tech and art and that's it. For some people everything has to be political, and anyone who doesn't want to read the angry rants is an an echo chamber, but so be it. Personally, I find my cake to be very tasty.
It's possible to block both. If bsky would let you use starter packs as block lists, it would be a lot easier than it is.
I block any account that is primarily politics-based (Hillary Clinton's social media team joined a month ago and has 5k blocks already so I'm not alone), and other accounts as and when they become tiresome (ie when they go on a political rant). My feeling is that academics broke mostly to bluesky while techies broke mostly to mastodon. I follow some academic accounts that occasionally post interesting things - nothing earth-shattering, but worth checking in once every couple of days.
My main problem with bsky is that a lot of academics seem to approach it as a write-only medium. No engagement.
I mean yea you can call anything hate if you squint hard enough. Reasonable terms of service are never going to satisfy everyone. You can definitely have your cake and eat it too so long as you don't try and please everyone.
the problem is both sides are so caught up in their own identity politics that they can't see the other's perspective. the same goes for right-wing and left-wing in America.
The bigger problem is that people from societies with FPTP voting systems often tend to think binary. The world is more multi-faceted than that, it's not always two sides to a coin, good vs bad, left vs. right, etc.
Agreed! 400 million peoples interests cant be represented by TWO people.
I'm not sure what "perspective" has to do with asymmetric warfare unless the perspective is that of how many bombs are being dropped on you.
come on now.
this war has been going on for 3/4 of a century now.
both sides have aggrieved the other and it's a quagmire that most likely will never end.
to have a strong stance NOW means you might be influenced by the news a lot more than you realize.
yea, I much like the approach of "be polite" instead of "don't be toxic", which unfortunately is less and less practiced by both sides.
This! It is important to be polite in the face of genocide.
Almost no one is pro genocide, so why is it happening when most countries are more or less democracies? One theory is that the media and politician change the narrative whichever way it suits them. And imo one way to combat this is with polite measured conversations. As the alternative is easily distorted by the opposite side.
There are certain keywords people use that are instant red flags. They usually mean I can immediately ignore everything they've written. "Common sense" has become a big one. It's code for "my feelings trump your facts" (pun intended).
But another one is "both sides". There are a number of reasons people fall back to this. Usually it's intellectual laziness, not wanting to know any of the details, usually because it's an issue that the person saying it doesn't actually care about the issue. Some people derive validation from somehow being "above the fray" on some partisan issue.
Another reason is simply not caring about the issue and trying to create a moral equivalence is intentionally or unintentionally used to silence a particular topic.
Not everything is some disagreement between equivalent positions. Sometimes, a given position is just plain wrong. Slavery, genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing. These are issues historically that have a right side and a wrong side.
On Gaza, there is the side that wants to live, not be bombed and not exist in an apartheid state and there's the side that wants to ethnically cleanse millions of people to create lebensraum. Merely going to Israel has been a radicalizing experience for a lot of people because they instantly recognize what's going on. There are countless examples of this now. I'll choose just one as an example: Sde Temain [1].
[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/8/13/israeli...
I suspect the only true way to keep social media non-toxic is simply keep the audience small. Plenty of lovely small subreddits out there. Since bluesky isn't at Twitter volumes yet, it's hard to know if any of their changes will matter in the slightest.
Regardless of your allegiances, if you are all of the same homogenious opinion, how would you even recognize extremism or "toxicity" in your own echo chambers?
To a worm in horseradish the world is horseradish.
It really helps to have multiple "algorithms" AND allowing everyone to build their own.
I miss when there was no algorithm and everything was a simple time series.
I only use lists on twitter, never really notice the "algorithm". I rarely see politics and it's all chronological.
They have an actually working version of that too, I think it’s one of the defaults.
Much out of touch with reality. That is not possible to control human nature with tech.
Humans are incredibly easy to 'control' with tech. From pamphlets to books to radio and onwards through history to colour revolutions and influencing elections to getting you to buy things late at night that you won't ever use etc, its happening all the time.
Not to those who are determined to be toxic.
Every interaction you have with a social network nudges you into one mode of interacting or other.
The biggest deviation from the norm with Twitter is the ideas of quote-tweeting and subtweeting, making a new post rather than replying to something you disagree with in the comments. The automatic signal boost this achieves incentivizes it strongly, and when the larger account is the quote-tweeting account, they are inclined to hear reply comments almost exclusively from people who support their critique. The structural decision to make this form of interaction easy and productive leads to very Twitter-specific sort of toxic groupthink.
"You, a Twitter nobody, just disagreed with someone on their misinterpretation of a well-documented point of history. In response, they made a new post to their 700k followers calling you a chickenshit know-nothing. Your followers heard nothing. 300 of their followers have piled on to elaborate on your faults."
This used to be limited to the sort of instant cancellation associated with "Central Park Karen," who IIRC went viral just after boarding a flight and was fired before she landed.
I just want to go back to the early days of Facebook, when it was simply a small list of friends I actually knew and enjoyed hanging out with online. No karma, no upvotes or downvotes, no organizations, just people connecting.
Is there even a social platform like that anymore? One that isn’t political, overwhelming, or trying to be everything at once? At this point, it feels like the only real options are private Discord servers or maybe WhatsApp.
I guess the elephant in the room is that any successful platform needs advertising, and once businesses get involved, things tend to spiral with ads everywhere, and eventually, politics creep in too.
Hard for me to tell if I'm in the minority or part of some silent majority, but I don't see much toxic or political content on either site, mostly just art and content related to hobbies I have. I only look at my following feeds, and it's pretty easy to mute a few problem words or phrases. I figure if you spend a lot of time on social media, it's worth it to put in the work to tailor the content you see to your tastes.
Nontoxic social media isn’t possible. The best you can do is ban politics and non relevant (to topic) discussion.
Also, blue sky is also beholden to rich people like the rest…
It's pretty clear now that a suggestion algorithm that prioritizes engagement at all costs has toxic side effects. This does not prove that all promotion algorithms, much less all social media, is inherently toxic.
Mastodon is a social media platform that's not built on a content promotion algorithm. Mastodon has a lot of group think, and you can absolutely build yourself an echo chamber full of political virtue signalling if that's what you're into. But I wouldn't characterize this as "toxic," it just reflects what you put into it. There's no algorithm to pump it into your face if you don't want it.
I'd love to see a version of Mastodon, or some social media platform, that manages to promote sensible discussion algorithmically. I don't know how this would work, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that this proves that it's impossible.
> Nontoxic social media isn’t possible.
I agree, but you can't ignore politics because in the end your definition of Toxicity is probably a direct reflection of your political positions.
And if current platform are so toxic I believe it's mainly by choice, be it an ideological or economical one.
If you ban politics, someone will just say you're playing politics.
I personally think the idea of creating a place that suits everyone is unrealistic. It will never happen, and there will always be something that offends one side or the other. It seems like open social networks will always be toxic (whatever that really means).
There's a difference between being toxic and not allowing politics. Political discussions aren't inherently toxic, they're just easier to slip into toxicity.
Look at HN. There's political conversation here occasionally, but it's not generally toxic.
All it takes is clear, consistent, and constant moderation.
I used to think like that, but now I believe the vast majority of those discussions are inherently toxic, so I just don’t bring them up anymore in almost any context, whether it's work, friends, family, or social networks (if I still used them, that is). It just brings so much unhappiness, and there's nothing to "gain", especially nowadays when you're constantly bombarded by social media, the media, or whatever else is pushing you in whatever direction is convenient at the time.
Let’s be honest, most political posts here get flagged and disappear almost immediately, especially if they lean a certain way. I’m not specifying which direction I think they lean because people will interpret it differently, and it would be pointless. It's yet another example of why, in most cases, it’s toxic.
They will be inherently toxic when the politics are inherently toxic.
You can be banned from /r/Conservative permanently for showing the slightest deviation from the current propaganda line, but there are such a ready supply of new people that the algorithm attracts who naturally are opposed to the political platform that many bans are handed out per discussion.
> You can be banned from /r/Conservative permanently for showing the slightest deviation from the current propaganda line
This is true for almost every single subreddit. Contemplate why you felt the need to single out r/conservative in particular.
It amazes me that in the age of AI there isn't a way to utilise it to either talk users out of posting aggressive, illegal or inflammatory material or tag it as such, so you can filter out the blowhards on the platform.
The blowhards drive engagement. . . Social media platforms have every incentive to keep them around.
Banning politics can be truly toxic, because it turns out people don't agree on what's political and what isn't. Me, I don't think the rights of women to get healthcare is political but I'm fully aware plenty of people disagree with me on this point.
It seems the only reliable way to keep social media nontoxic is by doing both of these things:
- Keep the audience small
- Create an echo chamber (intentionally or not)
You need both. Bluesky has both.
Bluesky feels like a small village museum: everyone looks alike, posts alike, and agrees on what to collectively demonize.
> reliable way to keep social media nontoxic ... Bluesky has both.
BS is full of vitriol against anything outside of the desired narrative, I do not consider this 'nontoxic' no matter your perspective.
Are any European-based social networks going to pop into existence at this opportune time to get some momentum from the current global western America-is-no-longer-our-friend sentiment?
https://joinmastodon.org/ https://lemmyverse.net/
They are federated as well; I just educated myself on BlueSky, I had heard that maybe it wasn't but it looks fairly federated. Companies can always slap a lock on after the fact though.
I think the entire concept of these global social networks is falling out of favour. I expect to see the rise of smaller online communities with well-defined interest scopes and robust community moderation - much like HN.
There are also more than 7 billion people that aren't in the US or EU.
Text microblogging is one of the lowest-bandwidth-requirement, and therefore least-capital-intensive, internet startups.
7 trillion?! Man people must have really got busy the past few years...
I blame daily economics headlines.
Yeah, economics really gets me in the mood too.
A few days ago I said how places like Bluesky only seem to contain posts about how terrible Twitter is, and no actual content of their own. Behold the first post I see:
> The administration is a perfect storm of dumb people who enjoy inflicting pain and are addicted to psychotic cruelty and quadrupling down. It ends in total ruin if you don't impeach him.
Second post:
> you, a rube: “i want my kid to grow up to be a doctor or an engineer or a teacher”
lutnick, a genius: “to make america great again your child will make iphones that they will not be able to afford”
Third (talking about some Trump post or something):
> Again, worth at the last considering the possibility that he’s a malevolent idiot who has no idea what he’s doing.
And so it goes on and on.
I'm all for a "non-toxic" social platform, but I have yet to see one. All the alternatives are mirror images of Twitter and co. — not in that they're not toxic, but that they're toxic but leaning in another direction politically. It's all the same, people calling other people stupid.
Bluesky looks very left wing centered, will make you even more biased to one side and blind for the other. The more you see just one side more extreme (or crazy) you will become.
I feel bad to say this, but it looks like it failed already to be non toxic. It at least is a lot less toxic than X. For now.
It is X vs BlueSky. It participates in the argument between two groups of people. It does not solve anything.
X is a lot worse, but with a growing number of users, a growing number of negativity will come. It starts on the political parts of the platform, but will trickle down to other parts as well.
By Bluesky being put away as a platform for 'lefties' on X and users on Bluesky saying "Go to your fascist platform X" to other users it essentially participates in dividing people. At least, on the political parts of the platform.
It confirms what an amazing job HN did in the last decade or more. Still a nice community, nice people and quality comments. Although some people will say it is in decline, it is still quite a nice and friendly community.
I still enjoy fintwit and like bluesky for energy related things.
> By Bluesky being put away as a platform for 'lefties' on X and users on Bluesky saying "Go to your fascist platform X" to other users it essentially participates in dividing people. At least, on the political parts of the platform.
What's wrong with that? I mean, yes, lefties can be pretty scathing against their own - particularly the questions of Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia come to my mind as major dividers.
But even then: the death threats, "I wish you'd get raped by the n----s you invited to Germany, then you see the results of the great replacement yourself" and similarly inclined comments on Twitter are all but completely absent on Bluesky, and instead of feeding even the most obvious trolls, the general policy is to block them and move on - which is why the far-right is complaining so often about Bluesky being a "librul echo chamber". They just can't fathom that people might not be interested in interacting with them.
What is wrong is that it does not help with the discussion. It makes the discussion personal by calling someone a fascist or a leftie. A good discussion is about the subject, not the person. Also it makes both X and Bluesky feel opinionated, making a good discussion impossible.
I must say that I did not see any death threats on X either, but i just choose to stay away from that part of the platform.
> A good discussion is about the subject, not the person.
That's the problem with trolls. They keep on pestering people with trivially-to-google questions, a tactic known as "sealioning" [1]. On top of that you have literal ChatGPT or otherwise AI-powered bots engaging in discussions in bad faith.
> It makes the discussion personal by calling someone a fascist or a leftie.
It's pretty pointless to debate with fascists, most of those that you can find on Twitter aren't interested in discussion - they're interested in destroying discussion by forcing others to interact with their bullshit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Every time I open bluesky it seems to be full of over-the-top anxiety posting by delusional leftists - last post I saw was telling LGBT people to start storing cash in their mattresses before Trump confiscates their bank accounts. Either that or it's the embattled rear guard of wokism trying to impose increasingly arcane rules on other posters.
That's all less toxic than whatever is happening on twitter these days, but still harmful for the people involved and probably a net negative for society as a whole.
It's an echo chamber for the left, the same as X is now for the right. Ideas and opinions unchallenged or questioned is what people want.
https://archive.is/WPV8C
Bluesky is as bad as Twitter. The conspiracy theories and absurdly-biased takes are equally pronounced. Someone should start a social media site where you get booted for political talk, like you would from a decent gentleman's club.
Some mirrors are cracked, some are polished—but all of them reflect the same world.
The question is: how much can you take in? As much as I despise the owner, it's X all day.
> The question is: how much can you take in? As much as I despise the owner, it's X all day.
The problem with X is, the mirror is artificially dented by a ton of people paying for the privilege of getting their replies prioritised. That in turn drowns out the voice of those not willing to pay Musk for the privilege.
[flagged]
what a normal thing to say
social media is not toxic. humans are toxic. the only social media that is not toxic is google+ because there are no humans there.